NYC Stories: Final Thoughts

Thoughts on the city

Before going to NYC, I had a very romanticized view of the city.  In my mind, San Francisco and NYC were the only two cities I wanted to live in after graduation.  After spending a week in the Big Apple, I have to scratch it off the list.  There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) There are seasons (aka it gets cold)
Even though I went to NYC for spring break, it was already too cold for me.  Wearing three to four layers for most of the year and bracing against the biting wind sounds like recipe for misery.  After enduring a record breaking cold winter in Shanghai, I have no more tolerance for the cold.  Happiness is life under the California sun, preferably in San Diego.  Seasons are completely overrated, because if it is perfect all year why fix something that is not broken?

2) Everything is expensive
I was experiencing sticker shock everywhere, as every meal seemed to run at least $10.  Things are expensive in San Francisco, but NYC definitely takes the cake.  The large presence of cash only shops is just further insult to injury as I have to physically see my wallet empty.

3) People are "blah"
There is something about the people in NYC.  I sense a certain coldness among them, it's something that I cannot really describe in a succinct word or phrase, but it makes me feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome in the city.  It's not that they are rude, though it comes off like that at times.  Rudeness does not bother me much after being pushed and shoved all around Shanghai, but something about a New Yorker's attitude does.  Watching New Yorkers weave through tourists, I get the impression that they feel anybody in their way is not just an inconvenience but a grave threat to their life.  I can feel the contempt whenever someone is inconvenienced.  I guess I could sum all these feelings up as "unfriendly" but that really does not do it justice.  I will just say that in all my travels to cities around the world, I have never had such an unsettling feeling about a populace.

Thoughts on Emoinacloset

Did Robocop and I satisfy our curiosity about Emoinacloset's life in NYC? Not really.

I did get glimpses of Emoinacloset's lifestyle that surprised me, like how he eats out for every meal.  Emoinacloset's kitchen trash can did not even have a bag over it, making me wonder if he ever used it! Despite spending almost every waking hour with Emoinacloset, there was no pivotal opening up moment where Robocop and I learned every one of  his deep dark secrets.  Outside of small talk, I found it hard to engage with Emoinacloset's friends.  The irony is that in NYC, Emoinacloset learned more about my friends, Crystal and Lucretia than I did about his.  

Emoinacloset's life in NYC is still very much a black box.

-muffinman

NYC Stories: Most Interesting Night

It's been almost two months since I left NYC, so why am I still writing about it?  Well, it's probably because events that happened that spring break still come up in my mind and make me smile and sometimes cringe.

Thursday night, after the Broadway musical was a night to remember.

The night started with drinking games with Emoinacloset's NYU friends.  While sitting in the giant drinking circle, I noticed that there was girl sitting across from me who seemed to be catching my gaze a bit too much for it to be a coincidence.  Suspicious that she was perhaps a little bit interested in me, I smiled back and made some small talk.  Later, my suspicions were confirmed at the bar where she grabbed my hand and motioned me to go to the back of the bar.  Unfortunately, I did not find her very attractive so I doubled back and rejoined Emoinacloset before heading to the back.

Once at the back of the bar, a drink fell from a table near me and a short, overweight Indian confronted me about me about knocking over his drink.  I vehemently denied it and the Indian turned to Robocop and told him "your bro knocked over my drink, we don't have a problem right now but we will."  A friend of Emoinacloset's  told Robocop to give me a $20 to buy the Indian a drink, of course, Robocop did not have anything in his wallet.  At this point, things were getting tense so remembering my Krav Maga, I dropped the girl's umbrella that I was carry on the floor and put my hands up as non threateningly as possible.  The Indian's friends were trying to tell him to just forget about the drink, but he insisted I pay for it and I was pretty certain that I had not knocked it over.  I contemplated throwing the first punch, there was no doubt that the Indian with his hands down and leaning back would get caught cleanly.  Thoughts of Ev, my Krav instructor telling us strike first stuck in my mind, but then I realized my night night would end right there and decided against it. Instead, I just walked away and sat down in another part of the bar waiting for the situation to diffuse.

While sitting down, I reflected on my sad situation.  Here I was away from my friends, running away from someone I most definitely could beat in a fight, thinking "fuck him" I rejoined my friends at the bar.  Once again, I was confronted by the Indian, but this time I was determined to not let him ruin my night.  I gave in to buying him a new drink, thinking that $10 was a small price to pay for an undisturbed night out.  As I approached the bar, the bartender was in the middle of telling everybody to move down and stop crowding the bar once they had gotten their drinks.  I quickly interrupted him and asked if he could speed up an order for a a rum and ginger ale as I was trying to get out of a fight.  The bartender poured me a shot of rum and told me it was on the house!  Having just experienced some good karma, I was feeling pretty good about turning the other cheek.  I took the shot back to the Indian, who promptly drank it, then I shook hands with him and his friends; and we agreed that everything was now "good."

I turned around to face my friends, but then felt a hand on my shoulder.  It was the Indian again!  He told me I had given him the wrong drink and demanded I buy him a ginger ale and Captain Morgan.  Incensed, I was in the process of loading up my right hand and it took all my self control to decide he was not worth it and walked to the other end of the bar.
     
Robocop found me at the front of the bar, later Emoinacloset and the girl who was hitting on me later appeared too.  I was still angry over the drink incident, cursing furiously and talking about how I should have taken that fight.  Emoinacloset assured me walking away was the right decision and when the girl questioned if I really could have fought the Indian, things took an interesting turn.  Suddenly, Emoinacloset became my wingman, he told the girl how I had been training Muay Thai, Krav Maga and BJJ for years! Somehow that segmented into how I was working at a startup and doing an amazing job.  In my mind, I laughed out loud over how ridiculous the conversation was getting, I think I saw a smile creep over Robocop's face as well.  Come to think of it, I don't think Emoinacloset even said all those things with a straight face.

Not sure if the girl was buying all the praise, but as the night wore on she definitely got more flirty.  She held on to my hand and according to Robocop at times looked like she wanted to kiss me.  At some point, she must have gotten tired of repeatedly shutting down her flirtations and stepped out to take a phone call, only to never to come back.

Back at the apartment, Emoinacloset and Robocop blasted me for not "sealing the deal."  I shot back that they would be giving me much more shit had I hooked up with her and they agreed, before once again jumping on me for not "sealing the deal."  While reflecting my first experience getting hit on, I realized that Robocop and I had been butchering her name the whole night.  It's hilarious to think that a girl flirted with me the whole night despite me calling her two different names, both of which were incorrect.

The next morning, I discovered that I had accidentally added the girl on Facebook and she had accepted.  The hilarity continued when we called a mutual friend who knew the girl and relayed my story.  Our mutual friend was not surprised and we learned that the girl did this kind of thing quite often.  The icing to this story happened back in San Diego, where the girl randomly messages me on Facebook and we actually had an hour long conversation without any awkwardness.  When I asked her about that night, she seemed to have little to no memory about it, something that was later confirmed by the mutual friend.

That's alright, because Emoinacloset, Robocop and I will be laughing about this for awhile.

-muffinman

NYC stories: THAT FB Message

I met probably the prettiest NYU girl from the whole trip on Wednesday night. Emoinacloset, Robocop and I were at a bar with some of Emoinacloset's NYU friends. Out of everybody in the groupm I noticed there was just one girl that I found attractive and I tried my best to talk to her. Unfortunately, as I have been discovering, I am not very adept at small talk, in fact, I think I might be downright terrible at it. I did not get openly shot down, mainly because I was not agressively pursuing her but a conversation never started as much as I had hoped. Honestly, I think I am better suited for long talks over coffee than chit chat at a bar.


Emoinacloset and Robocop both noticed my interest in her but I denied it. They kept bugging me about it for the rest of the trip. Things only escalated when I revealed that I had sent her this Facebook:

Needless to say, she did not respond. My reasoning for this ill conceived message was that I was better at writing than talking. Also for some reason at noon the next day I was feeling flirty. Initially, I had thought my Facebook message was pretty good, until I showed it to Emoinacloset and Robocop and they bluntly told me it was terrible and even a little creepy. "Bah!" I thought to myself! What do they know? They can't write for shit!" then we told a few other people about it and I heard "creepy" a few more times. By the end of the day, even I had to admit that it might have been a mistake.


Looking back at the message after coming back from New York, I cringe. I cannot even get myself to read the whole thing again (a sure sign of bad writing). My friend Diane, pointed out that it was chock full of one liners, which in retrospect is true. So much for good writing.


I should probably stick to blog writing for the foreseeable future. I am good at that right?

-muffinman

NYC Stories: Winning Big on Broadway!

Having done all the other touristy stuff, much of which is not worth mentioning, we were left with just one thing left that we absolutely had to do in NYC. Watch Broadway!

Unfortunately, like much of the trip, the unplanned execution went poorly. Initially, I had wanted Emoinacloset, Robocop and me to wake up early and get discounted same day tickets in the Financial District, but sleeping at four in the morning has a tendency to make one wake up past eleven. Upon oversleeping, we changed up our plans and headed to Times Square with all the other tourists and lined up at the TKTS booth.

30 minutes in line and a lot of smartphone research later, Emoinacloset suggested we go directly to the theater box offices and get student tickets. The big risk, however, was that these significantly cheaper student tickets could be long sold out already. Feeling the emptiness of my bank account I decided to take the risk.

Our first stop was the Book of Mormon, a musical written by the creators of South Park. At the box office, they told us that did they do not sell student tickets but instead did a drawing for steeply discounted tickets at 5:30pm instead. We left the theatre a bit hesitant about leaving our hopes of seeing Broadway to chance, so we tried our luck at Chicago, but were told that student tickets were sold out within 15 minutes of the box office opening. Leaving Chicago, we realized that the drawing was the only way we were going to watch anything that day. As if it could improve our chances, I loudly yelled out "I AM FEELING LUCKY!” as we walked away from the theater.

Coming back to the Book of Mormon 15 minutes before the drawing, we were feeling very enthusiastic about our chances. There was a line with about 30 people so we thought our chances of winning were pretty good, then we realized that this was the line for standing tickets and the ever growing crowd in front of the main doors was for the drawing. When we saw the size of the crowd which eventually topped out at a little over a hundred people, our hearts sank and any feeling of luck was gone. We filled out our forms and nervously waited.

There was a man with a megaphone announcing the winners and he asked people to "act like they won something" if their ticket was drawn. We took that to heart and when Robocop won, he cheered as obnoxiously as possible. Robocop even hollered the entire time he swam his way through the crowd to get to the ticket office.

While Robocop was waiting to get his ticket, Emoinacloset and I were brainstorming about what to do next. Robocop could only get 2 tickets meaning that one of us would have to grab a standing seat and be separated from the group. We were both thinking of a fair way to decide who should be left out when Emoinacloset's ticket was drawn.

Hearing Emoinacloset's name, I just remember repeatedly screaming "OH SHIT! THIS IS RIDICULOUS" and jumping up and down as the crowd stared. I had just taken our obnoxious cheering to the next level. Thankfully, Emoinacloset wised up and took the door that the crowd was not blocking, minimizing his chances of getting assaulted.

 Inside the box office, Emoinacloset told me he overheard an old couple that was standing in front of us, angrily say they had entered the drawing three times and never won. Later, we learned from a mutual friend that the show was sold out for months! Hearing all of that just made winning all the sweeter.

Immediately after getting the tickets, we camera whored it up, taking multiple pictures in front of the theater. We even went back to the theater after walking a block away because I had the brilliant idea of tebowing with the tickets.

The musical was great, but I have to say winning those tickets was even better. This was easily the high point of our NYC trip and a definite “life moment” that I will remember forever.